


Le Colée

by cyanocorax



Series: La Chevalerie [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanocorax/pseuds/cyanocorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Few could have done as you did,” he told her. “Men or women.” But she had frowned at that, and not taken it as the compliment it was meant to be.</i> AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le Colée

**Author's Note:**

> cw gendered slurs.

 

-

 

_ The colée consisted of two acts and an address; to clench the hand and bring it down heavily upon the neck of the postulant, accompanied by a word or two, or a sentence of a strictly military character, was the whole ceremony. “Be a true knight, and valiant against thine enemies!” or, “Forget not to be faithful to thy liege lord!” or more simple still, “Be valiant!” These two words carry great weight, and say everything._

\- Léon Gautier, Chivalry

 

-

 

Years and wars and burnings later it would still be the first day he ever saw her that sat brightest in his memory. Nine and ten, and already taller than nearly every man in her garrison, all the lines of her face drawn as if by some wild thing. She was not beautiful. Every drunken sailor in every dirty brewhouse said so when they spoke of her, this woman-stag who had held off all the power of the Reach for nigh a year with only five hundred men. The rebel’s sister. _The iron cunt._

Davos had brought her his onions and his fish, and she had sworn him to her service, taken off his fingers. “I would rather have had my lord husband do this,” she told him as she unsheathed the sword and ran her palm over the leather of its grip with such familiarity Davos had to wonder. “The others might give his word more weight than they will mine. But as he is dead I can see no other alternative.” Afterwards she watched him sleep off the loss of blood in the kitchens, and was there to show him to his room when he awoke.

“Few could have done as you did,” he told her. “Men or women.” But she had frowned at that, and not taken it as the compliment it was meant to be. 

“I did only my duty. As my husband’s wife. As Robert’s sister.” Her look was cold. Perhaps she did not like to be reminded that it was skirts she wore, instead of mail. Davos did not know how to speak to such women—he could not smile at them, charm his way about them. “I suppose he will be king now, the great oaf,” she had added, before leaving him, alone in the dark with his aching hand.

When the war was over she sent for him again, to tell him he and his were to be given a keep upon Cape Wrath: “As promised.” He was received in the solar of Storm’s End, with her seated by the fire, her widow’s black leeching what little color she had from her face. This time, Davos knelt. Still a new thing. He had never envisioned himself doing it at the feet of a king’s sister. In years before it had always seemed the last act you performed before an axe fell to cleave your smuggler’s head from your smuggler’s shoulders. _But I am not a smuggler any longer. I am a knight, of sorts._

She had been right, about the weight of her words. She had been right about most things.

Marya thought she was amusing, “A girl who thinks too much of herself.”

“Girl?” Davos laughed. “She’s a good deal older than you were, when we married.”

“Still, a girl. She has a child’s way of thinking, this one. What does she expect from you? Vows and chivalry and fancy words? Will she have you knock other men off their horses for her in the lists?”

“She wants my service. My loyalty. I owe her that much.” It seemed like the proper thing to say. “She’s given our sons a better life.”

“After you’d already saved hers. After she’d taken your fingers.” Marya was still smiling, but her tone had changed somehow, grown more distant. “Our life wasn’t all that bad before, was it? We weren’t in the street. We didn’t starve.”

 _No. Not yet._ Davos realized then that had wanted her to tell him he had done well for himself, for all of them, but Marya was never one to hand out such easy comforts. 

She had kissed him, as if to apologize, and took his mangled hand between her own. “Come on,” she said, all the laughter come back into her voice. “Our bed’s been cold for far too long.” He took in the sight of her bright, brown eyes, the sweet smell of her hair. Warm and welcoming, for all her hard truths, and so very unlike the woman-child he’d left at Storm’s End.

For those first few years he truly was not expected much of at all— there was certainly no _jousting_ —though when she married again he was told to be present at the wedding, and treated like some sort of grotesque on display throughout. Her new husband even approached him during the feast to tell him in drunken anger, “I’ve heard much of you, Onion _Knight_. Her little folly. Her little mistake. The woman needs reining in; I told His Grace as much. If I had been her husband at the time I would never have allowed such… such…” Axell Florent stumbled backwards, leaning all his not-insignificant weight against a nearby column. “Behavior.” He shot a dirty look at the high table, where King Robert was engaged in uprorious laughter as little Lord Renly toyed with his food, and the bride was wreathed in absolute stillness. “His Grace is too in… indulgent… Lets her get away with her insolence… I will do no such thing, mark me.”

Davos searched for some sort of response which wouldn’t lead to his being thrown into the castle moat, but it wasn’t long before the man was off again. “Did you fuck her?” Axell whispered, moving closer, the sour smell of wine rolling from him in waves. “No? Suppose I’d never be sure though, would I. They saddled me with some Stormlands lordling’s half-chewed leftovers and soon I’ll have to choke her down.”

That he did—and on the mattress Robert Baratheon and the little Florent girl had already warmed for him, too—stumbling after his lady wife with a face red from rage and shame and drink. Davos watched in perfect silence with the others as the chamber door swung shut upon the shape of her back, the dark knot of her hair. 

Marya had taken his arm then. “Poor woman,” she’d said at last.

It was several turns of the moon before he was sent for again. He took his oldest sons with him this time, Dale and Allard and Maric, and they lined up in a row like ducklings before Lady Florent-Baratheon, (the name, he had decided, did not suit her at all—as if it mattered,) recited their courtesies.

“They are fine boys,” she had said. Her eyes were dim, he noticed, her expression weary. Davos had heard rumors of one miscarriage, and then rumors of another, and perhaps they had been true after all. 

He regretted bringing his sons then. “Wait outside,” he told them, and they exited the solar in silence, Dale obediently leading the way, the door shutting out all their whispering.

She straightened after they were gone. “We must speak of your situation,” she told him, and stood. “The king has… _kindly_ informed me that he will allow your knighthood to stand, on the condition that you swear your service to my lord husband. It is fair, he says. More than fair.” 

_The woman needs reining in; I told His Grace as much._

“The choice is yours, of course, but I imagine it will not much of an issue,” she continued. She had gone to stand next to the window, to stare out at the flat, grey sea which surrounded them. “Though if this rebellion of Balon Greyjoy’s is seen through you may be expected to sail against him with our—” Her lips pursed, briefly. “With Robert’s ships.”

Davos blinked hard, and tried to imagine himself bent at Axell Florent’s feet. His missing fingertips suddenly began to itch. He raised his eyes and opened his mouth, said, “It’s you I swore to serve, m’lady.”

She very nearly seemed to smile at that. Fleeting though it was, one corner of her mouth twitched out of place, flickered upwards. “Words are wind, Ser Davos,” she said, quietly, as if not wanting him to hear, and dismissed him.

He saw her briefly the following day. The shadow of her, in any case, half-visible behind her husband’s bulky frame as Davos knelt. It was her voice he tried to listen for when Axell Florent’s mouth opened, to swear he would do Davos no dishonor, but she was silent in all forms of herself, real and imagined. When he looked he found her face full of anger, caged and unspent. 

She left before the thing was done, spinning on one heel to disappear altogether into the dark.

Afterwards, Lord Axell shot him a look of vicious, spiteful poison, and smiled as he sheathed his sword. _Mine now_ , it said. _My creature._

The war came to them first only by raven. Reports of Tywin Lannister’s ships wreathed in smoke, and ironmen climbing up the coast at Seagard, and raids all along the Riverlands. Davos watched her write letters to the king that were never sent, long, angry missives that she would feed to the fire as soon as the ink was dry, telling him to act quickly, and not rely on the keeps of the west to hold alone for long. He saw her little enough, between turning the island’s meagre fleet into something battle-worthy and the demands of home, but even at a distance he could make out the gray in her hair and the tautness in her shoulders. She slid in and out of rooms like a ghost, her hands clenched and held firm at her sides, saying nothing, not even to him. _And why should she? You were a whim, old man. A girl’s passing fancy._ But she was a woman now, with a husband and two babes turned cold and buried, and much more to weigh heavy upon her.

So it surprised him when the night before he sailed for west and battle she met him at the gate, walked him down towards the docks. She had pulled her cowl up over her head, and seemed ill at ease with what they did. Her hands could not be still, and her eyes would not meet his.

For much of the way, neither of them spoke. The moon was half full, the sky cloudless; a hot breeze filled each and every sail and set it to flapping. He could hear the sound of speech floating up from the inn, drunken laughter and raucous shouting. _There will be many an aching head on deck come dawn._

“He shouldn’t allow them to carry on so,” she said, sharp and sudden. “And the whores. Axell should have them banned. Men do not need such distractions on the eve of battle.” When he laughed, she turned to him, added, “Do you mock me, ser?”

“No, m’lady. But such urges are only natural.”

She scowled. Even in the darkness, he could feel it, bending the space around her. “It does not make them right.”

He tilted his head, to look at her, and saw only a smudge beside him in the darkness, spouting breath. All his life he had made it his business to read people, the way he’d never learned to read letters, but with her Davos found it just about impossible. He could hear the Blind Bastard’s voice in his ear, croaking, ‘Everyone has a price, my boy,’ yet the truth of that died the instant his head went rolling down the Cobblecat’s deck. Davos knew, even then, for all his youth, that some men were past gold, past honors, past praise. Past even their own selves.

They had reached the wharf, the wet wood beneath their feet muffling their footsteps as they walked as far out as they could, to where the smallest skiffs bobbed up and down with each heaving sigh of the sea. She turned and stared at him, lowered her cowl, reached into the folds of her cloak, and retrieved a slender, folded sheaf of papers. Lacking vision, Davos ran his thumb over the seal as she handed it to him, and felt the fine bumps of a stag’s twelve-tined antlers.

“It isn’t crowned,” she said, “but perhaps he will not notice.” 

“Who won’t?”

“Axell. My husband.” Her mouth was a small, firm knot. “Your celebrated admiral. He doesn’t know the first thing about war, or ships, or strategy. I’m… I’ve decided to offer him some advice.” 

Davos frowned, and felt his stomach tighten. “I do not understand.”

“I do not require your understanding.” He heard the soft grind of her teeth as she chewed over her words, watched the silhouette of her jaw work back and forth and back. “Tell him it’s from Robert,” she said at last. “Tell him it’s from His _Grace_ , the king, and he will lap it up eagerly enough. I learnt to copy Robert’s signature years ago, when we were still children. He never had a taste for accounts. I was the one who—” She stopped, and gave her head a violent shake. “If I allow him to make his blunders it might cost us everything.”

 _Us._

He tucked the letter into the folds of his cloak. 

To the east, the sky had begun to lighten, and men were beginning to call to one another from the rigging of their ships, preparing for departure. Davos could sense her impatience, could hear the scuff of her heel against the wharf. She was staring south, across the water and towards a distant, unseen shore. 

“Did you know,” she said, all of a sudden, “he never wanted me to stay at Storm’s End. His last raven begged for me to leave, even. ‘Run little sister, run for your life’.” She shrugged. “It was my husband he wanted to stay, as castellan, but you see what little good _he_ did. My men were on the verge of eating his corpse when you arrived.”

Davos felt himself shudder. It seemed five lifetimes laid between this dawn and that one, when he’d had two whole hands and no ‘Ser’ to his name.

“It was Renly he was worried about in true,” she continued. “Robert should’ve known me better. He should’ve known I would never have tucked my tail between my legs and put my back to the likes of Mace Tyrell. And Renly…” An edge of doubt crept into her voice, was quickly discarded and replaced with conviction. “Renly has hopefully gained some measure of strength from the experience.”

“He seemed hale and hearty last I saw him, m’lady,” Davos said, remembering the laughing boy who’d been at her knee at Storm’s End, a wooden sword in one hand and her skirts clutched in the other. “I don’t think it’s weakened him any.”

“Children spring back quickly, the maester says.” She reached up, stiffly, to push stray strands of hair out of her eyes. “When he was weeping at the pain in his belly, though, and my husband lay abed unable to move, I told myself it was duty that made me stay. To the realm, if not to Robert.” She turned, and flashed him the weary shadow of a smile. “Was I wrong to say so?” 

_Am I wrong still?_

Davos could feel the letter pressing against his side, the scrawl of a king’s forged signature suddenly turned heavy. “You saved over four hundred men,” he said, hesitant. 

“I might have saved more. And it was you who saved all of us, Onion Knight.”

“Few could have done as you did—”

“Man or woman, yes. You said as much, that first evening. After I’d let Cressen put your bloody fingertips on the coals so you could keep the bones.” She was frowning again. “It’s past time you left.”

It was. The sea called out to him, he could see his men on their ships, he could see them watching him, waiting for him. Somehow he found himself thinking of his wife and the look in her eyes when he’d said his farewells. This time had been different from all the others, in some strange, unnamable way. Marya had not been afraid; only uncertain, as he was. They were in strange, untested waters.

“Axell will be missing you.”

Davos looked up, straightened. “Of course, m’lady.”

She gave her jaw another firm swipe to one side. He thought she would wish him well at the very least—wasn’t that how it went in all the songs, when a lady saw her knight off to battle?—but instead she only said, “Best not to keep him waiting,” spun on her heel, and left.

He watched her walk up the old stone steps towards the keep, cloak streaming behind her, hands clenched, a hundred different thoughts clashing with one another inside her head. He watched her grow small in the distance. He watched until he could watch no longer, until she had disappeared behind the crest. 

He laughed at his own foolishness then. Laughed, strode up the gangplank, and prepared to set forth.


End file.
